I had one on a previous boat, and really liked it. The sonar and GPS worked flawlessly. It will accept the navionics chips - check navionics site for the lakes and the detail of the lakes first. The newest chip has more high detail maps which is nice, but some of the older versions 06, 07 are much cheaper if you can find them and they may have the lake you want in high detail, or your choice lake map may have not been updated at all from the older ones - so it won't be any better for you to by the new chip. As far as color and a little more clarity on the sonar, there is no difference in that and the LMS 520 - I don't think you can network the 480 either - at least the version I had, you could not.